Chemical attack investigative team to start work next year

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A new investigative team being set up to apportion blame for poison gas and nerve agent attacks in Syria will be ready to start work early next year, the chief of the global chemical weapons watchdog said Tuesday.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons voted in June to begin apportioning blame for attacks after Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution last November to extend the mandate of a joint UN-OPCW investigative team seeking to establish responsibility for a string of chemical attacks in Syria.

The joint team accused Syria of using chlorine gas in at least two attacks in 2014 and 2015, and the nerve agent sarin in an attack in April 2017 in the town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed about 100 people. The UN-OPCW team also accused the Islamic State extremist group of using mustard gas twice in 2015 and 2016.